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CHAPTER TWO

Battleground

First say to yourself what you would be; and then
do what you have to do. 

—Epictetus

As he had grown older, Karl had learned to deal with the fear. He'd had to.

Deal with it, yes, but not well. That would have been too much to ask of himself. Karl Cullinane had spent twenty-one of his twenty-nine years as a middle-class American, living safely in the last half of the twentieth century. Deep inside, he still wasn't used to having lost that safety, that comfort. The only way he could handle that was to push the fear away, if only for a time.

The quiet moments before a fight were always the worst. Too much time to think; too much opportunity to let himself be scared.

His heart pounding, Karl checked the slaver's knots and gag once more before turning him over to Daherrin.

"And take this, too," Karl said, handing the slaver's rifle and pouch to the dwarf. It was a strange-looking rifle: The lock, if any, was inside the stock; the trigger looked more like a miniature pump handle than anything else.

But there wasn't enough light or time to examine it fully; that would have to be saved for later. If there was a later.

Karl clenched his hands into fists. It wouldn't do for Walter, Chak, or Daherrin to see his fingers tremble.

Grasping the slaver by the front of his tunic, the dwarf swung him to his right shoulder, balancing the man easily, then accepted the slaver rifle and powder kit in his oversized left hand. Dwarves weren't just shorter and more heavily built than humans; their joints were thicker, their muscles denser, far more powerful.

"And remember," Slovotsky said, "if everything blows up in our faces here, this stuff has to get back—"

"—to Home," Daherrin finished. "Including this useless piece of meat," he said, bouncing the slaver up and down on his shoulder. "It will be done."

The dwarf turned and walked away.

Karl finished unwrapping his pistols from their protecting oilcloth, then primed their pans. He tucked the vial of fine priming powder and oilcloth in his pouch before sticking the pistols back in his belt, making sure that the barrels pointed away from his feet.

Chak had done the same with his two pistols; he patted their curving butts and flashed Karl a quick smile.

"Gwellin had a couple of spares," Walter said, handing each of them one of the three shotguns he'd brought back, along with the dwarf. "Hope you don't mind my supplementing things a bit."

Chak hefted his shotgun easily. "I don't mind at all."

"Me neither." Karl propped the butt on the ground while he slipped a bolt into his crossbow and nocked it with a practiced motion of his thumb. "Is the gun loaded?"

"Standard shotgun load. Everything but the pan. Gwellin did it; I watched him myself."

"Good." Handing the crossbow to Chak, Karl picked up the shotgun. He took the vial of priming powder from his pouch and primed the pan, bringing the frizzen down and locking it into place with a quiet click. He handed the vial to Chak and waited while the dark little man primed his own shotgun.

Karl was a bit vain about the shotguns; they were his own innovation. Normally, when the lands inside a rifle barrel had worn down to uselessness, the weapon had to be rebored and rerifled, which changed the caliber, making standard rounds useless. Karl had come up with the notion of doing a more thorough reboring of the barrel, until the bore was a thumb's width, then cutting it down, turning the weapon into a smoothbore shotgun.

Walter gave the crossbow back to Karl, then clapped a hand to his shoulder. "It doesn't get any easier, does it? You want me to do a quick recon?"

"No. Let's get this over with." He gave a quick glance down the road. Five dwarf warriors waited off in the distance, just on Karl's side of the bend.

He waved at them to follow, then started walking down the road, Walter on one side, Chak on the other, the campfire growing closer with every step.

"Here we go," Karl said.

Chak sucked air through his teeth; Walter brought his shotgun up.

Ahead, the road forked. In the dark, three boxy wagons stood around the campfire. While more than a dozen slept under their blankets, ten grizzled men sat around the fire, drinking and talking. Beyond them, several others stood over a huge blanket on which lay the moaning forms of the two women. The men called mocking words of encouragement to their friends while waiting their own turns.

Walter turned to beckon to the dwarves. With all the noise from the camp, they wouldn't be noticed for the next few seconds. "Ready when you are," he whispered, his voice faltering momentarily.

Chak brought his shotgun up to his shoulder.

Karl's hand grew tight around the crossbow's stock. He raised it to his shoulder, curled his fingers around the trigger as he took aim at the nearest of the slavers around the campfire, and squeezed.

Fffft! The slaver lunged forward, clutching at the feathers that just barely projected from his chest.

The crack of Chak's shotgun split the night. Three of the slavers screamed in pain as they caught some of the scattering pellets; a fourth clapped both hands to what had been a face.

As the other slavers leaped to their feet, Karl dropped the crossbow to one side, transferred the shotgun to his right hand, braced it against his hip, and fired.

Another man lunged for a rifle, but the blast from Slovotsky's shotgun opened his belly as though it were an overripe melon; he fell to the grass, vomit pouring from his mouth in a bloody torrent.

Others dashed across the meadow, running for the road. Chak raised a pistol and sighted down his arm.

"No!" Karl shouted. "Leave them to the two-guns—follow me." He dropped the empty shotgun and sprinted for the blankets, snatching his pistols from his belt and cocking them.

The slavers were beginning to react to the attack. Several of them made a mad dash for the nearest of the boxy wagons, only to be cut down by two quick volleys of gunfire.

Peill's signal rocket screamed into the night.

"Down!" Karl threw an arm across his eyes and looked away as it exploded above the meadow, a white flash that momentarily dazzled his eyes.

The nine slavers around Karl, Chak, and Walter hadn't been prepared for it. They screamed, blinded, if only for a few moments.

One of the slavers, clad only in his leather tunic, was pawing around the ground for his sword. Karl kicked him in the face, bones crunching beneath his boot. He turned to shoot another who was trying to bring an unsteady rifle to bear on Chak. With his left-hand pistol, he quickly gutshot a third, then reached over his shoulder to draw his sword as a blocky man, his teeth bared in a snarl, lunged for him, a foot-long dagger clutched tightly in his white-knuckled fingers.

Karl's sword was barely out of its scabbard when a heavy mass slammed into his back, a hairy arm snaking around his throat.

There wasn't time to think about it. He could deal either with the enemy clinging to his back or with the one charging from the front.

Instinct took over. Ignoring the slaver on his back, he parried the other's knife with the flat of his blade, then thrust the point of his sword into the knife wielder's throat, twisting savagely as he pulled the blade back.

Crack! Impact shook the slaver on Karl's back as the pistol shot rang out. The slaver shuddered, and the arm around Karl's throat went limp. Karl grabbed the thick wrist, spun, and twisted, bringing his knee up into the man's chin, bone shattering like glass.

Two yards away, Chak favored him with a brief smile as he dropped his smoking pistol to the ground, then drew his falchion to parry the attack of another slaver.

Walter's scimitar clanged against the ninth slaver's steel. It looked as though Walter could handle the man, but it didn't occur to Karl to play fair: he skewered Walter's opponent through the kidney, then spun around into a crouch.

Chak's opponent was down, clutching at a wounded arm. The dark little man didn't waste any more time on the slaver; he drew his remaining pistol and shot him in the chest.

With a clatter of hooves, Tennetty's horsemen galloped through the meadow, sending the last of the uninjured slavers into flight. Therol detached himself from the rest of the group, leaping off his horse to dispense healing draughts to two injured dwarves, the only casualties on Karl's side. So far.

Karl breathed a sigh. It was over for him, at least for now. Peill's and Gwellin's squads had knocked down all of their targets, and the now combined squad was working its way through the scattered bodies, administering deathblows to the wounded.

Down the road, shots echoed, horses whinnied, and men screamed.

"Karl!" Gwellin called out, standing over the body of a slaver, a bloody battleaxe in his hands. "Do you want us to—"

"No. Not until the shots die down." Killing the rest was the job of the two-guns squad and Tennetty's horsemen, not Gwellin's dwarves or Peill's squad. For them, the fight was over. Unmounted men rushing the slavers from behind would risk being mistaken for slavers in the darkness. Karl had lost far too many of his warriors in his time, but not one had been killed by friendly fire, and he didn't intend that any ever should.

A low moan from the ground drew Karl's attention. The half-naked slaver that Karl had kicked in the face was starting to move, holding the shattered remnants of his jaw together.

Over his cupped, blood-dripping hands, the man's eyes grew wide as Karl approached him.

"Karl," Walter snapped. "We want another live one, remember?"

Karl kicked the man in the shoulder, bowling him over, then stooped to bring the slaver's hands behind his back and tie them tightly with a leather thong from his pouch.

"Therol, check the wagons for healing draughts, and treat this one. A few drops from every bottle, eh?" It was always necessary to test captured healing draughts on someone expendable; two years before, Karl had lost one of his warriors to what had looked to be a bottle of Healing Hand Society draughts, but had actually been poison.

"Done," Therol called back. "And how about you?"

"Me?"

"Don't talk about it, Therol," Chak shouted. "Just get your ass over here. Karl's hurt."

"Chak, I'm fine."

"Right." Slovotsky snorted. "Sure you are." Walter's hand slipped down Karl's back. When he brought it in front of Karl's face, blood dripped from the fingers.

"It's not too bad, Karl. Just a nick—but you'd better get it healed before your adrenaline level drops and it starts to hurt you."

What had been a dim, distant pain suddenly cut across his back like a whip. He gasped, then willed himself to ignore it. There's no danger. Therol will have me healed up in a minute. Pain was just a biologically programmed warning of danger. There wasn't any danger here, so the pain should go away. It was logical, but it didn't help.

It was best to keep busy, try to keep his mind off the pain. "Chak, you and Gwellin's people check out the wagons—except for the wizard's wagon. Just put a guard on that one and leave it alone."

"Do you think there's anyone in there?"

"I don't know, so assume that there is."

"I was just asking." Chak sniffed. "I have done this before."

"Sorry. Put it down to nerves."

"Yes, Karl." Chak ran off, calling for Gwellin.

Every motion making the wound on his back cry out in agony, he turned to face the two women huddling in the blankets. He took a step toward the nearest one, a blonde, her almond eyes and high cheekbones betraying a mixed heritage, with forebears from both the Kathard and the Middle Lands.

"No." Her eyes grew wide. "You're Karl Cullinane. Don't kill me, please. Please. I'll do anything you want. I'm very good, really I am. Please—"

"Ta havath." Easy. Karl tried to smile reassuringly. "T'rar ammalli." I'm a friend. 

Therol arrived with the bottle of healing draughts and slopped some of the icy liquid on Karl's back. As always, the pain vanished as though it had never been. He worked his arms for a moment, relishing the comfort.

The blonde was still pleading with him. "Please don't hurt me. Please . . ."

Damn.

"Those bastards." Slovotsky shook his head. "Again?"

"Yeah."

Slovotsky held out a hand; Karl exchanged his saber for two of Slovotsky's knives.

The women edged away from him as he slowly approached, holding the knives out, offering them the hilts.

"Everything you've been told is a lie. I'm not going to kill you. I'm not going to hurt you—you're free, as of now." It was a calculated gamble, but one that hadn't yet failed, although he still had a scar on his right cheek from the time that it came close to failing.

The blonde took the proffered knife, holding it awkwardly at arm's length. The brunette mimicked her.

"Karl," Walter said in English, his voice pitched low, "either I've been away from Kirah too long, or both these ladies are gorgeous."

"Ta havath," he murmured. "So what if they are?" With the way they were huddled in their blankets, he couldn't see much of them, but what he could see looked good.

Awfully good, which was privately embarrassing. It wasn't just that he intended to remain faithful to Andy-Andy—he should have been feeling only sympathy for these two poor wretches, not noticing the swell of a full breast or the smoothness of a shapely thigh.

He switched back to Erendra. "Nobody's going to touch you. We'll get some clothes for you in a little while, just as soon as things settle down."

"So," Slovotsky continued in English, "we're looking at prime stuff, here. I could see the slavers taking some culls out of Pandathaway, but these two would go for a hell of a lot of money there. Or anywhere else."

Slovotsky was right, of course. As usual. But what did it mean?

The pounding of a horse's hooves spun Karl around, his hand reaching for the hilt of a sword that wasn't there.

It was only Tennetty. She slipped from Pirate's back, her face creased in a broad smile. "Everything's fine, Karl," she said. "Three casualties on our side."

"How bad?"

"I said that everything's fine. Wellem was the worst. He caught a round in the gut, but we got the draughts into him in plenty of time. Mm, I got a capture, too." She eyed the slaver that Therol was treating. "That makes three, yes?"

"Yes."

"Good. So—"

"Would you take care of the women, first? Later there'll be plenty of time to stick a knife in these bastards and get them to talk."

"Agreed. But I'll take care of the women my way, since we have a spare slaver. Unless you're really set on stopping me?" Tennetty carefully kept her hand away from her swordhilt. "I'm asking nicely, aren't I?"

Karl shrugged. "Go ahead."

She took a shrouded lantern down from her saddle and slipped the baffles, then elbowed Therol out of the way and urged the slaver to follow her into the woods by the simple expedient of grabbing the man by his hair and pulling him to his feet.

"Follow me," she ordered the two women, smiling gently. "And bring your knives. Relax—this is the best thing in the world for you." The slaver safely in hand, she led the two women into the woods, her voice trailing off in the distance. "Now, you can take your time with him, but Karl doesn't like it, so it'd be better if you start with . . ."

Slovotsky started to object, but Karl quelled him with a sudden chopping gesture.

"She's been there, Walter. And we haven't."

"I don't have to like it. I don't have to like any of it, and I don't, Karl. I've gotten used to killing, but—"

"No, you don't have to like it." Karl shrugged. "What you have to do is not let it get to you," he said, looking Walter square in the face as he forced himself not to shudder at the screams coming from the woods. "Let's check out the wagons."

"Right."

"So?" Walter asked, squatting in front of the blanket Karl had spread on the grass. "What do you make of all this?"

"Trouble." Karl stood and stretched, squinting at the noon sun. He rubbed the back of his aching neck and sighed, then held out his hand for the waterbag.

Walter tossed it to him. Karl drank deeply, then splashed some on his face before recorking the bag and handing it back.

Walter uncorked it and took a sip. "Speaking of trouble, not only did I find three bottles of dragonbane extract in one of the wagons, but Daherrin has been checking out their crossbow bolts. A lot of them seem to be absolutely coated with the stuff. Looks like the slavers are still interested in offing Ellegon."

That wasn't surprising: Ellegon was awfully useful for the Home forces to have around.

"Are you sure you burned it all?" Karl asked. Once thoroughly burned, dragonbane was every bit as harmless to Ellegon as burned pollen would be to a pollen-sensitive human, no matter how serious his allergy.

"Of course. Dumped the bottles in the hottest part of the fire; threw in every suspicious bolt."

Karl looked over to the slavers' campfire, now barely smoldering. "Have Daherrin build up the fire, just to be sure."

"Right."

Karl looked around. The aftermath of the battle wasn't pretty. It never was. But it had, in its own gruesome way, become almost routine.

Just beyond the campfire, two piles of bodies lay, gathering flies. The smaller pile was a haphazard arrangement of fully clothed slavers; it continued to shrink as Daherrin and two assistants frisked the bodies, reclaiming both valuables and whatever clothing was sufficiently unbloodied to be usable, then stacking the corpses like cordwood.

By Karl's orders, the wizard's wagon had been left completely alone. There hadn't been any complaint; wizards had been known to leave hidden glyphs.

While the two remaining wagons had been left intact, their contents had been unpacked, sorted, inventoried, and repacked. Peill had removed the inlaid brass wave-and-chain insignia of the Pandathaway Slavers' Guild from the wagons' sides and propped up the plaques facing the road.

Standard operating procedure—slavers were always left for the vultures, along with some means for passersby to identify them as slavers. It was important that everyone know that only slavers had to worry about unprovoked attack by the Home forces; it took most of the steam out of pursuit by the locals.

"Well?" Walter raised an eyebrow. "What have we got?"

"A puzzle. I don't like puzzles." The guns weren't guns, and the powder wasn't gunpowder. What the slavers had been using was a fine-grained powder that looked more like ground glass than anything else. The gunlocks fired what appeared to be water through their breechholes and into the barrels. The water had to be loaded with something, but what?

Whatever it was, it worked. Loaded into one of the slaver's smoothbores, the powder could sink a lead ball a full two inches into a block of pine, only a quarter-inch less than a Home-made rifle firing Riccetti's best powder.

"Take a look." Karl unlooped his amulet from his neck and held it over the glass vial containing the slaver powder. The amber gem came alive: It pulsed with an inner light, first a dark red, then a greenish blue, then red, then blue again. "There's a charm involved."

"Well, your wife should be able to puzzle that out. What's bothering me is that it doesn't stink when it's lit off—however the hell their guns light it off. You try tasting it?"

"Tasting it?" Karl raised an eyebrow. "Do I look stupid?"

Slovotsky smiled. "Answer me first." His face grew grim; he shook his head. "We know that it works—somehow—and that it's charmed."

"Or the pouch is charmed, or something." Karl eased the cork out of the bottle and sniffed at it again. No scent at all. "Could it be cordite? Or just plain guncotton?"

"Not cordite. I've seen smokeless powder; it's darker, and it stinks when it's lit off, not like this stuff. But I've never been around pure guncotton, although I think it is white like this." Slovotsky stood, stretching in the bright sunlight. "It can't be guncotton, though—you use fire to set off guncotton, not water." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the woods where Tennetty had gone off with the two surviving slavers in tow. "Maybe Ten'll have something more. She's taking her time with the prisoners."

"Maybe they've got a lot to say."

"Don't count on it. We killed the master in the fight, and master slavers don't tell their journeymen a whole lot."

"So? Where do we go from here?"

Slovotsky thought it over for a moment. He pursed his lips. "Go back to first principles. What would you have wanted Daherrin to do if he'd gotten out with that one pouch and gun, the rest of us left behind, dead?"

"Get it back to the valley; have Riccetti analyze it." Karl nodded. "Which is what we'll do—although we'd better include Andy-Andy and Thellaren in on the group."

Tennetty's slim form appeared through a break in the trees. Karl beckoned her over.

"How are they doing?"

"Just fine." She nodded. "Chak and I got them drunk; they're sleeping it off. I think Chak likes Jilla—the blonde."

"Really?"

"She could do worse," Tennetty said. "It's going to be a major adjustment for both of them. They were raised as room servants in the Velvet Inn in Pandathaway. Sternius picked them up at a foreclosure sale, for a bit of diversion during the trip." She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "I gave them your tent; didn't figure you'd mind."

"Must have taken you quite a while to do all that."

She shook her head. "Not really. I spent most of the time interviewing the two slavers."

"What'd they tell you?"

She smiled thinly. "Everything they knew." The smile fell. "Which wasn't much. You were right; this wasn't a raiding party. It was some sort of a trade. They were on their way to the inn in Enkiar to deliver guns and powder to whoever the buyers are."

"Any idea how much they were going to be paid?"

"Sure. Each of them was to get—"

"Not that—how much were they going to get for the cargo?"

"They didn't know. I do know what they were going to be paid in: a chain of slaves. How many?" She shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"Or as bad." Thirty or so slavers could handle a chain of anywhere from about one hundred to well over a thousand slaves, perhaps as many as two thousand. It all depended on how closely chained and how well tamed their human merchandise was. "What else have you got?"

"Not much, and most of it negative. These two don't know where the guns and powder were supposed to go from Enkiar. They don't know who made the powder in the first place; Sternius had all the barrels loaded in his wagons before he put together his team."

"How about the guns?"

She shrugged. "They picked them up at a smith's in Pandathaway, just before they left. Arriken the Salke—he has a medium-big shop on the Street of Steel." She chewed on her lip for a moment. "You know, we could go into Pandathaway and look him up."

Karl nodded. "Not a bad idea. Although the idea of entering Pandathaway makes me a bit nervous." He fingered his beard. "I guess I could lose the beard, maybe dye my hair. Dressed as a sailor—"

"No way." Slovotsky shook his head. "Thousands of people in Pandathaway saw you win the swords competition; a lot of them must still be around."

"I wasn't suggesting that Karl do it. But me, well—"

"Right, Tennetty." Karl snorted. "And there are a whole lot of one-eyed women warriors wandering around."

"Well, there's that glass eye that Thellaren has been trying to sell me. Maybe it won't look natural, but . . ." She fingercombed her bangs to half-cover her eyepatch. "But if I wear my hair like this . . ."

"Hmmm." Slovotsky nodded. "It might work. But why not take it from the other end? Pandathaway is too risky—but we could try it from the Enkiar side. I'm more than a little curious about who the guns and powder were going to, and why. And particularly how much they were paying. There's a technical term for the kind of trouble we'll be in if this stuff is relatively cheap."

"What's that?" Karl asked.

"Deep shit." Slovotsky smiled.

"But how would we do it?" Karl rose and stretched. "We don't know who we'd be looking for. The leader might have, but—"

"But what if he got himself killed? What if, say, the group was jumped by that evil, wicked Karl Cullinane and his raiders? And what if they lost, say, a quarter of their number before their guns drove that wicked Cullinane character off?"

Karl nodded. "Not bad." He turned to Tennetty. "How soon are they due in Enkiar?"

She shrugged. "Whenever they got there. Sternius wasn't rushing, but he wasn't lollygagging, either. I figure they're due in about three tendays, but I doubt that the buyer'd be worried if it took four. Only one problem."

"Well?"

"We need the right . . . props. By the time we get to Enkiar, I'm sure we'll be able to handle these slaver rifles, but that's not going to do it, not all by itself."

"So? What's the problem?"

"The first is the wizard. The buyers will be expecting one; apparently this stuff is too valuable to trust to such a small party without having a wizard around for the extra protection. Even if we put one of us into wizard's robes, that might not fool them."

"That's easy." Walter said. "Ellegon's due tonight; we'll have him fly back Home, bring back Henrad. Time the kid earned his keep."

"That's not enough." Tennetty shook her head. "What if the buyers are expecting the slavers to have a couple of slaves with them? I don't think we could expect Jilla and Danni to play along."

"No," Walter said, "we couldn't. Besides, if everything blew up in our faces, they wouldn't be able to fight their way out. No, we'll do it this way: What happened is that one of the slaves got killed in the fight, and the other tried to escape. We flogged her seriously, then healed her up when infection set in and it looked like it was going to kill her. Left a few scars . . . ."

Tennetty finally got it; she gasped, her face paled. "I can't. No—nobody's putting a collar around my neck."

"Easy, Ten." Karl laid a hand on her arm. "You don't have to. Maybe it won't be necessary for the disguise to work. The thing is, though . . ." He let his voice trail off.

"Well?"

"Who else could do it? Who else could look the part—and fight her way out, if all hell breaks loose?"

Slovotsky nodded. "As it always seems to. The only other choice I can think of is Andy."

"No." Karl shook his head. "No. Not if I'm going to be around. And not if I'm not. Clear?" When Andy-Andy was endangered, it was hard for Karl to concentrate on anything but her safety. He owed the others better—he owed himself better.

Tennetty looked him straight in the eye. "So I'm expendable, but Andrea isn't. Is that the way of it?"

"If you want to think of it that way, then go ahead. It's your choice." He folded his hands over and cracked his knuckles. "But damned if I'm going to justify myself to you, or to anyone else. You got that?"

She grunted.

"I asked if you got that."

"Yes."

"I can't hear you."

"Yes, dammit."

"Fine." He closed his eyes for a moment. He was missing something.

Ahh—if they were going to impersonate the slavers, then this raid didn't happen. And if it didn't happen, then what were all these bodies doing littering the meadow?

He raised a hand and beckoned Erek over. "I want Stick saddled and brought to me; I'm going up to the mesa to wait for Ellegon."

"Messages?"

"Two. First is to Chak. Begins: You and Slovotsky are going to pick a thirty-man team to impersonate some slavers; report to Walter. I want the wagons cleaned up and the insignia remounted; they're to be ready to roll by morning—but keep everyone out of the wizard's wagon; it's to stay sealed up until we have Henrad check it out. Ends. To Gwellin. Begins: Report to Tennetty, immediately. Ends. Go."

Erek nodded and ran off; Karl called Daherrin over. "Change of plans—I want the slavers buried in the woods."

"Buried? What for?"

"Practice."

Daherrin snorted, then broke into a deep-chested laugh. "I will get an explanation eventually, won't I?"

"If you live until dark. Bury them deep; I don't want any wolves digging them up. This raid didn't happen. Got it?"

"Yes, Karl Cullinane." The dwarf walked away, bellowing for his assistants.

Karl turned to Slovotsky. "Walter, I want you to pick the team carefully. No dwarves, and go light on elves."

"Of course."

"Compare notes with Tennetty and Chak. This could easily turn out to be messy; anybody who was even a bit off his game last night goes back Home."

"How about Donidge? I hear he was damn good last night."

"So?"

"So, his wife's due in a few tendays. I think it would be nice if he was around for it."

"Good point—count him out. Same for anybody else with pressing business back Home." He lowered his voice. "Exceptway orfay oinersjay; Ahiraway's avinghay enoughway oubletray, as it is. Kapish?" Pig latin wasn't exactly an elegant code, but no adults from This Side spoke English well enough to puzzle it out.

"Sí, señor. Gwellin's going to lead the overland group?"

"Right. Also, I want you to have the team work out with the slavers' guns, but make sure everyone's damn careful with that powder until we know more about it. Turn in your own guns to Gwellin; he's to have them broken down and loaded onto the flatbed."

"Can I keep a couple of pistols?"

"No—and none of our bullets or powder, either. We're going to play slaver until we get to Enkiar, and I don't want any slipups." Karl turned to Tennetty "You're to supervise the stowing of the slaver powder. I want a little taken out of each barrel and put in a flask. Carefully, now—this stuff might be poison; make sure you don't get any on you. Then seal the barrels back up tight and leave them alone."

"Fine." she nodded. "Who's going back Home with the powder?"

"You are. If Ellegon's brought the basket, you'll take Jilla and Danni with you. Otherwise they'll go back overland with Gwellin. Prepare them for both possibilities. Also, take three of the slavers' guns for analysis—put them with the powder. You're to take slaver rifles and powder to Riccetti and Andy-Andy; have them run an analysis. I'll want Ellegon to catch up with us somewhere this side of Enkiar; we'll set up a rendezvous when he gets here. He can bring Henrad along with him."

"And me?"

"Look—if you want in, you've got it. If you don't, you may as well take some time off at Home. If you do want in, you'll have to get yourself outfitted with that glass eye."

"Very well," Tennetty said. "You can count me out of this one, Karl. I don't want to wear a collar again. Ever."

That was too bad, but he wasn't going to try to push Tennetty into doing something that she really wasn't willing to do. "Fair enough. We'll have to do without."

Walter opened his mouth, then closed it. "Fine."

Erek arrived, leading Karl's horse. Karl pulled himself to Stick's broad back. "Anything else?"

"Yes." Tennetty jerked her thumb at the woods. "I've still got those two slavers."

Damn. Karl had forgotten about that for a moment—forgetting wasn't a luxury he could allow himself. "What kind of shape are they in?"

She shook her head. "Not too bad. Just a few cuts and bruises. I mean, I hamstrung them, of course—"

"Of course."

"—but they're not near dead. Should I fix that? Or do you want to?"

"The watchman lives. I promised him."

"Oh, great. 'Karl Cullinane's word is as good as gold'—is that it?"

"Yes."

"No!"

Stick took a prancing step backward; Karl reined in the stallion with difficulty. "Easy, damn you. . . . Yes, Tennetty. My word counts for something."

"What do you want to do? If we're going to try to impersonate a slaver team, we can't afford to have him wandering around, working his mouth. Do you want me to turn him loose?" she shrilled, her hand resting on the hilt of her saber.

Walter moved behind Tennetty; Karl waved him away. "No, Ten. Take a bottle of healing draughts—one of theirs. Fix up his legs, and one arm. We'll take him back Home, keep him locked up. He won't see any more than traders already have. Once we come back from Enkiar, we'll turn him loose. I promised that he'd live."

Tennetty took a deep breath. "And the other? You didn't promise every bloody slaver his life, did you?"

"No, I didn't. Kill him. Walter, go with her; take charge of the prisoner. I won't want a ley de fuga, kapish?"

"Got it."

Karl gave a light tug on the reins; Stick broke into a canter.

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Contents
Framed

Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER TWO

Battleground

First say to yourself what you would be; and then
do what you have to do. 

—Epictetus

As he had grown older, Karl had learned to deal with the fear. He'd had to.

Deal with it, yes, but not well. That would have been too much to ask of himself. Karl Cullinane had spent twenty-one of his twenty-nine years as a middle-class American, living safely in the last half of the twentieth century. Deep inside, he still wasn't used to having lost that safety, that comfort. The only way he could handle that was to push the fear away, if only for a time.

The quiet moments before a fight were always the worst. Too much time to think; too much opportunity to let himself be scared.

His heart pounding, Karl checked the slaver's knots and gag once more before turning him over to Daherrin.

"And take this, too," Karl said, handing the slaver's rifle and pouch to the dwarf. It was a strange-looking rifle: The lock, if any, was inside the stock; the trigger looked more like a miniature pump handle than anything else.

But there wasn't enough light or time to examine it fully; that would have to be saved for later. If there was a later.

Karl clenched his hands into fists. It wouldn't do for Walter, Chak, or Daherrin to see his fingers tremble.

Grasping the slaver by the front of his tunic, the dwarf swung him to his right shoulder, balancing the man easily, then accepted the slaver rifle and powder kit in his oversized left hand. Dwarves weren't just shorter and more heavily built than humans; their joints were thicker, their muscles denser, far more powerful.

"And remember," Slovotsky said, "if everything blows up in our faces here, this stuff has to get back—"

"—to Home," Daherrin finished. "Including this useless piece of meat," he said, bouncing the slaver up and down on his shoulder. "It will be done."

The dwarf turned and walked away.

Karl finished unwrapping his pistols from their protecting oilcloth, then primed their pans. He tucked the vial of fine priming powder and oilcloth in his pouch before sticking the pistols back in his belt, making sure that the barrels pointed away from his feet.

Chak had done the same with his two pistols; he patted their curving butts and flashed Karl a quick smile.

"Gwellin had a couple of spares," Walter said, handing each of them one of the three shotguns he'd brought back, along with the dwarf. "Hope you don't mind my supplementing things a bit."

Chak hefted his shotgun easily. "I don't mind at all."

"Me neither." Karl propped the butt on the ground while he slipped a bolt into his crossbow and nocked it with a practiced motion of his thumb. "Is the gun loaded?"

"Standard shotgun load. Everything but the pan. Gwellin did it; I watched him myself."

"Good." Handing the crossbow to Chak, Karl picked up the shotgun. He took the vial of priming powder from his pouch and primed the pan, bringing the frizzen down and locking it into place with a quiet click. He handed the vial to Chak and waited while the dark little man primed his own shotgun.

Karl was a bit vain about the shotguns; they were his own innovation. Normally, when the lands inside a rifle barrel had worn down to uselessness, the weapon had to be rebored and rerifled, which changed the caliber, making standard rounds useless. Karl had come up with the notion of doing a more thorough reboring of the barrel, until the bore was a thumb's width, then cutting it down, turning the weapon into a smoothbore shotgun.

Walter gave the crossbow back to Karl, then clapped a hand to his shoulder. "It doesn't get any easier, does it? You want me to do a quick recon?"

"No. Let's get this over with." He gave a quick glance down the road. Five dwarf warriors waited off in the distance, just on Karl's side of the bend.

He waved at them to follow, then started walking down the road, Walter on one side, Chak on the other, the campfire growing closer with every step.

"Here we go," Karl said.

Chak sucked air through his teeth; Walter brought his shotgun up.

Ahead, the road forked. In the dark, three boxy wagons stood around the campfire. While more than a dozen slept under their blankets, ten grizzled men sat around the fire, drinking and talking. Beyond them, several others stood over a huge blanket on which lay the moaning forms of the two women. The men called mocking words of encouragement to their friends while waiting their own turns.

Walter turned to beckon to the dwarves. With all the noise from the camp, they wouldn't be noticed for the next few seconds. "Ready when you are," he whispered, his voice faltering momentarily.

Chak brought his shotgun up to his shoulder.

Karl's hand grew tight around the crossbow's stock. He raised it to his shoulder, curled his fingers around the trigger as he took aim at the nearest of the slavers around the campfire, and squeezed.

Fffft! The slaver lunged forward, clutching at the feathers that just barely projected from his chest.

The crack of Chak's shotgun split the night. Three of the slavers screamed in pain as they caught some of the scattering pellets; a fourth clapped both hands to what had been a face.

As the other slavers leaped to their feet, Karl dropped the crossbow to one side, transferred the shotgun to his right hand, braced it against his hip, and fired.

Another man lunged for a rifle, but the blast from Slovotsky's shotgun opened his belly as though it were an overripe melon; he fell to the grass, vomit pouring from his mouth in a bloody torrent.

Others dashed across the meadow, running for the road. Chak raised a pistol and sighted down his arm.

"No!" Karl shouted. "Leave them to the two-guns—follow me." He dropped the empty shotgun and sprinted for the blankets, snatching his pistols from his belt and cocking them.

The slavers were beginning to react to the attack. Several of them made a mad dash for the nearest of the boxy wagons, only to be cut down by two quick volleys of gunfire.

Peill's signal rocket screamed into the night.

"Down!" Karl threw an arm across his eyes and looked away as it exploded above the meadow, a white flash that momentarily dazzled his eyes.

The nine slavers around Karl, Chak, and Walter hadn't been prepared for it. They screamed, blinded, if only for a few moments.

One of the slavers, clad only in his leather tunic, was pawing around the ground for his sword. Karl kicked him in the face, bones crunching beneath his boot. He turned to shoot another who was trying to bring an unsteady rifle to bear on Chak. With his left-hand pistol, he quickly gutshot a third, then reached over his shoulder to draw his sword as a blocky man, his teeth bared in a snarl, lunged for him, a foot-long dagger clutched tightly in his white-knuckled fingers.

Karl's sword was barely out of its scabbard when a heavy mass slammed into his back, a hairy arm snaking around his throat.

There wasn't time to think about it. He could deal either with the enemy clinging to his back or with the one charging from the front.

Instinct took over. Ignoring the slaver on his back, he parried the other's knife with the flat of his blade, then thrust the point of his sword into the knife wielder's throat, twisting savagely as he pulled the blade back.

Crack! Impact shook the slaver on Karl's back as the pistol shot rang out. The slaver shuddered, and the arm around Karl's throat went limp. Karl grabbed the thick wrist, spun, and twisted, bringing his knee up into the man's chin, bone shattering like glass.

Two yards away, Chak favored him with a brief smile as he dropped his smoking pistol to the ground, then drew his falchion to parry the attack of another slaver.

Walter's scimitar clanged against the ninth slaver's steel. It looked as though Walter could handle the man, but it didn't occur to Karl to play fair: he skewered Walter's opponent through the kidney, then spun around into a crouch.

Chak's opponent was down, clutching at a wounded arm. The dark little man didn't waste any more time on the slaver; he drew his remaining pistol and shot him in the chest.

With a clatter of hooves, Tennetty's horsemen galloped through the meadow, sending the last of the uninjured slavers into flight. Therol detached himself from the rest of the group, leaping off his horse to dispense healing draughts to two injured dwarves, the only casualties on Karl's side. So far.

Karl breathed a sigh. It was over for him, at least for now. Peill's and Gwellin's squads had knocked down all of their targets, and the now combined squad was working its way through the scattered bodies, administering deathblows to the wounded.

Down the road, shots echoed, horses whinnied, and men screamed.

"Karl!" Gwellin called out, standing over the body of a slaver, a bloody battleaxe in his hands. "Do you want us to—"

"No. Not until the shots die down." Killing the rest was the job of the two-guns squad and Tennetty's horsemen, not Gwellin's dwarves or Peill's squad. For them, the fight was over. Unmounted men rushing the slavers from behind would risk being mistaken for slavers in the darkness. Karl had lost far too many of his warriors in his time, but not one had been killed by friendly fire, and he didn't intend that any ever should.

A low moan from the ground drew Karl's attention. The half-naked slaver that Karl had kicked in the face was starting to move, holding the shattered remnants of his jaw together.

Over his cupped, blood-dripping hands, the man's eyes grew wide as Karl approached him.

"Karl," Walter snapped. "We want another live one, remember?"

Karl kicked the man in the shoulder, bowling him over, then stooped to bring the slaver's hands behind his back and tie them tightly with a leather thong from his pouch.

"Therol, check the wagons for healing draughts, and treat this one. A few drops from every bottle, eh?" It was always necessary to test captured healing draughts on someone expendable; two years before, Karl had lost one of his warriors to what had looked to be a bottle of Healing Hand Society draughts, but had actually been poison.

"Done," Therol called back. "And how about you?"

"Me?"

"Don't talk about it, Therol," Chak shouted. "Just get your ass over here. Karl's hurt."

"Chak, I'm fine."

"Right." Slovotsky snorted. "Sure you are." Walter's hand slipped down Karl's back. When he brought it in front of Karl's face, blood dripped from the fingers.

"It's not too bad, Karl. Just a nick—but you'd better get it healed before your adrenaline level drops and it starts to hurt you."

What had been a dim, distant pain suddenly cut across his back like a whip. He gasped, then willed himself to ignore it. There's no danger. Therol will have me healed up in a minute. Pain was just a biologically programmed warning of danger. There wasn't any danger here, so the pain should go away. It was logical, but it didn't help.

It was best to keep busy, try to keep his mind off the pain. "Chak, you and Gwellin's people check out the wagons—except for the wizard's wagon. Just put a guard on that one and leave it alone."

"Do you think there's anyone in there?"

"I don't know, so assume that there is."

"I was just asking." Chak sniffed. "I have done this before."

"Sorry. Put it down to nerves."

"Yes, Karl." Chak ran off, calling for Gwellin.

Every motion making the wound on his back cry out in agony, he turned to face the two women huddling in the blankets. He took a step toward the nearest one, a blonde, her almond eyes and high cheekbones betraying a mixed heritage, with forebears from both the Kathard and the Middle Lands.

"No." Her eyes grew wide. "You're Karl Cullinane. Don't kill me, please. Please. I'll do anything you want. I'm very good, really I am. Please—"

"Ta havath." Easy. Karl tried to smile reassuringly. "T'rar ammalli." I'm a friend. 

Therol arrived with the bottle of healing draughts and slopped some of the icy liquid on Karl's back. As always, the pain vanished as though it had never been. He worked his arms for a moment, relishing the comfort.

The blonde was still pleading with him. "Please don't hurt me. Please . . ."

Damn.

"Those bastards." Slovotsky shook his head. "Again?"

"Yeah."

Slovotsky held out a hand; Karl exchanged his saber for two of Slovotsky's knives.

The women edged away from him as he slowly approached, holding the knives out, offering them the hilts.

"Everything you've been told is a lie. I'm not going to kill you. I'm not going to hurt you—you're free, as of now." It was a calculated gamble, but one that hadn't yet failed, although he still had a scar on his right cheek from the time that it came close to failing.

The blonde took the proffered knife, holding it awkwardly at arm's length. The brunette mimicked her.

"Karl," Walter said in English, his voice pitched low, "either I've been away from Kirah too long, or both these ladies are gorgeous."

"Ta havath," he murmured. "So what if they are?" With the way they were huddled in their blankets, he couldn't see much of them, but what he could see looked good.

Awfully good, which was privately embarrassing. It wasn't just that he intended to remain faithful to Andy-Andy—he should have been feeling only sympathy for these two poor wretches, not noticing the swell of a full breast or the smoothness of a shapely thigh.

He switched back to Erendra. "Nobody's going to touch you. We'll get some clothes for you in a little while, just as soon as things settle down."

"So," Slovotsky continued in English, "we're looking at prime stuff, here. I could see the slavers taking some culls out of Pandathaway, but these two would go for a hell of a lot of money there. Or anywhere else."

Slovotsky was right, of course. As usual. But what did it mean?

The pounding of a horse's hooves spun Karl around, his hand reaching for the hilt of a sword that wasn't there.

It was only Tennetty. She slipped from Pirate's back, her face creased in a broad smile. "Everything's fine, Karl," she said. "Three casualties on our side."

"How bad?"

"I said that everything's fine. Wellem was the worst. He caught a round in the gut, but we got the draughts into him in plenty of time. Mm, I got a capture, too." She eyed the slaver that Therol was treating. "That makes three, yes?"

"Yes."

"Good. So—"

"Would you take care of the women, first? Later there'll be plenty of time to stick a knife in these bastards and get them to talk."

"Agreed. But I'll take care of the women my way, since we have a spare slaver. Unless you're really set on stopping me?" Tennetty carefully kept her hand away from her swordhilt. "I'm asking nicely, aren't I?"

Karl shrugged. "Go ahead."

She took a shrouded lantern down from her saddle and slipped the baffles, then elbowed Therol out of the way and urged the slaver to follow her into the woods by the simple expedient of grabbing the man by his hair and pulling him to his feet.

"Follow me," she ordered the two women, smiling gently. "And bring your knives. Relax—this is the best thing in the world for you." The slaver safely in hand, she led the two women into the woods, her voice trailing off in the distance. "Now, you can take your time with him, but Karl doesn't like it, so it'd be better if you start with . . ."

Slovotsky started to object, but Karl quelled him with a sudden chopping gesture.

"She's been there, Walter. And we haven't."

"I don't have to like it. I don't have to like any of it, and I don't, Karl. I've gotten used to killing, but—"

"No, you don't have to like it." Karl shrugged. "What you have to do is not let it get to you," he said, looking Walter square in the face as he forced himself not to shudder at the screams coming from the woods. "Let's check out the wagons."

"Right."

"So?" Walter asked, squatting in front of the blanket Karl had spread on the grass. "What do you make of all this?"

"Trouble." Karl stood and stretched, squinting at the noon sun. He rubbed the back of his aching neck and sighed, then held out his hand for the waterbag.

Walter tossed it to him. Karl drank deeply, then splashed some on his face before recorking the bag and handing it back.

Walter uncorked it and took a sip. "Speaking of trouble, not only did I find three bottles of dragonbane extract in one of the wagons, but Daherrin has been checking out their crossbow bolts. A lot of them seem to be absolutely coated with the stuff. Looks like the slavers are still interested in offing Ellegon."

That wasn't surprising: Ellegon was awfully useful for the Home forces to have around.

"Are you sure you burned it all?" Karl asked. Once thoroughly burned, dragonbane was every bit as harmless to Ellegon as burned pollen would be to a pollen-sensitive human, no matter how serious his allergy.

"Of course. Dumped the bottles in the hottest part of the fire; threw in every suspicious bolt."

Karl looked over to the slavers' campfire, now barely smoldering. "Have Daherrin build up the fire, just to be sure."

"Right."

Karl looked around. The aftermath of the battle wasn't pretty. It never was. But it had, in its own gruesome way, become almost routine.

Just beyond the campfire, two piles of bodies lay, gathering flies. The smaller pile was a haphazard arrangement of fully clothed slavers; it continued to shrink as Daherrin and two assistants frisked the bodies, reclaiming both valuables and whatever clothing was sufficiently unbloodied to be usable, then stacking the corpses like cordwood.

By Karl's orders, the wizard's wagon had been left completely alone. There hadn't been any complaint; wizards had been known to leave hidden glyphs.

While the two remaining wagons had been left intact, their contents had been unpacked, sorted, inventoried, and repacked. Peill had removed the inlaid brass wave-and-chain insignia of the Pandathaway Slavers' Guild from the wagons' sides and propped up the plaques facing the road.

Standard operating procedure—slavers were always left for the vultures, along with some means for passersby to identify them as slavers. It was important that everyone know that only slavers had to worry about unprovoked attack by the Home forces; it took most of the steam out of pursuit by the locals.

"Well?" Walter raised an eyebrow. "What have we got?"

"A puzzle. I don't like puzzles." The guns weren't guns, and the powder wasn't gunpowder. What the slavers had been using was a fine-grained powder that looked more like ground glass than anything else. The gunlocks fired what appeared to be water through their breechholes and into the barrels. The water had to be loaded with something, but what?

Whatever it was, it worked. Loaded into one of the slaver's smoothbores, the powder could sink a lead ball a full two inches into a block of pine, only a quarter-inch less than a Home-made rifle firing Riccetti's best powder.

"Take a look." Karl unlooped his amulet from his neck and held it over the glass vial containing the slaver powder. The amber gem came alive: It pulsed with an inner light, first a dark red, then a greenish blue, then red, then blue again. "There's a charm involved."

"Well, your wife should be able to puzzle that out. What's bothering me is that it doesn't stink when it's lit off—however the hell their guns light it off. You try tasting it?"

"Tasting it?" Karl raised an eyebrow. "Do I look stupid?"

Slovotsky smiled. "Answer me first." His face grew grim; he shook his head. "We know that it works—somehow—and that it's charmed."

"Or the pouch is charmed, or something." Karl eased the cork out of the bottle and sniffed at it again. No scent at all. "Could it be cordite? Or just plain guncotton?"

"Not cordite. I've seen smokeless powder; it's darker, and it stinks when it's lit off, not like this stuff. But I've never been around pure guncotton, although I think it is white like this." Slovotsky stood, stretching in the bright sunlight. "It can't be guncotton, though—you use fire to set off guncotton, not water." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the woods where Tennetty had gone off with the two surviving slavers in tow. "Maybe Ten'll have something more. She's taking her time with the prisoners."

"Maybe they've got a lot to say."

"Don't count on it. We killed the master in the fight, and master slavers don't tell their journeymen a whole lot."

"So? Where do we go from here?"

Slovotsky thought it over for a moment. He pursed his lips. "Go back to first principles. What would you have wanted Daherrin to do if he'd gotten out with that one pouch and gun, the rest of us left behind, dead?"

"Get it back to the valley; have Riccetti analyze it." Karl nodded. "Which is what we'll do—although we'd better include Andy-Andy and Thellaren in on the group."

Tennetty's slim form appeared through a break in the trees. Karl beckoned her over.

"How are they doing?"

"Just fine." She nodded. "Chak and I got them drunk; they're sleeping it off. I think Chak likes Jilla—the blonde."

"Really?"

"She could do worse," Tennetty said. "It's going to be a major adjustment for both of them. They were raised as room servants in the Velvet Inn in Pandathaway. Sternius picked them up at a foreclosure sale, for a bit of diversion during the trip." She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "I gave them your tent; didn't figure you'd mind."

"Must have taken you quite a while to do all that."

She shook her head. "Not really. I spent most of the time interviewing the two slavers."

"What'd they tell you?"

She smiled thinly. "Everything they knew." The smile fell. "Which wasn't much. You were right; this wasn't a raiding party. It was some sort of a trade. They were on their way to the inn in Enkiar to deliver guns and powder to whoever the buyers are."

"Any idea how much they were going to be paid?"

"Sure. Each of them was to get—"

"Not that—how much were they going to get for the cargo?"

"They didn't know. I do know what they were going to be paid in: a chain of slaves. How many?" She shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"Or as bad." Thirty or so slavers could handle a chain of anywhere from about one hundred to well over a thousand slaves, perhaps as many as two thousand. It all depended on how closely chained and how well tamed their human merchandise was. "What else have you got?"

"Not much, and most of it negative. These two don't know where the guns and powder were supposed to go from Enkiar. They don't know who made the powder in the first place; Sternius had all the barrels loaded in his wagons before he put together his team."

"How about the guns?"

She shrugged. "They picked them up at a smith's in Pandathaway, just before they left. Arriken the Salke—he has a medium-big shop on the Street of Steel." She chewed on her lip for a moment. "You know, we could go into Pandathaway and look him up."

Karl nodded. "Not a bad idea. Although the idea of entering Pandathaway makes me a bit nervous." He fingered his beard. "I guess I could lose the beard, maybe dye my hair. Dressed as a sailor—"

"No way." Slovotsky shook his head. "Thousands of people in Pandathaway saw you win the swords competition; a lot of them must still be around."

"I wasn't suggesting that Karl do it. But me, well—"

"Right, Tennetty." Karl snorted. "And there are a whole lot of one-eyed women warriors wandering around."

"Well, there's that glass eye that Thellaren has been trying to sell me. Maybe it won't look natural, but . . ." She fingercombed her bangs to half-cover her eyepatch. "But if I wear my hair like this . . ."

"Hmmm." Slovotsky nodded. "It might work. But why not take it from the other end? Pandathaway is too risky—but we could try it from the Enkiar side. I'm more than a little curious about who the guns and powder were going to, and why. And particularly how much they were paying. There's a technical term for the kind of trouble we'll be in if this stuff is relatively cheap."

"What's that?" Karl asked.

"Deep shit." Slovotsky smiled.

"But how would we do it?" Karl rose and stretched. "We don't know who we'd be looking for. The leader might have, but—"

"But what if he got himself killed? What if, say, the group was jumped by that evil, wicked Karl Cullinane and his raiders? And what if they lost, say, a quarter of their number before their guns drove that wicked Cullinane character off?"

Karl nodded. "Not bad." He turned to Tennetty. "How soon are they due in Enkiar?"

She shrugged. "Whenever they got there. Sternius wasn't rushing, but he wasn't lollygagging, either. I figure they're due in about three tendays, but I doubt that the buyer'd be worried if it took four. Only one problem."

"Well?"

"We need the right . . . props. By the time we get to Enkiar, I'm sure we'll be able to handle these slaver rifles, but that's not going to do it, not all by itself."

"So? What's the problem?"

"The first is the wizard. The buyers will be expecting one; apparently this stuff is too valuable to trust to such a small party without having a wizard around for the extra protection. Even if we put one of us into wizard's robes, that might not fool them."

"That's easy." Walter said. "Ellegon's due tonight; we'll have him fly back Home, bring back Henrad. Time the kid earned his keep."

"That's not enough." Tennetty shook her head. "What if the buyers are expecting the slavers to have a couple of slaves with them? I don't think we could expect Jilla and Danni to play along."

"No," Walter said, "we couldn't. Besides, if everything blew up in our faces, they wouldn't be able to fight their way out. No, we'll do it this way: What happened is that one of the slaves got killed in the fight, and the other tried to escape. We flogged her seriously, then healed her up when infection set in and it looked like it was going to kill her. Left a few scars . . . ."

Tennetty finally got it; she gasped, her face paled. "I can't. No—nobody's putting a collar around my neck."

"Easy, Ten." Karl laid a hand on her arm. "You don't have to. Maybe it won't be necessary for the disguise to work. The thing is, though . . ." He let his voice trail off.

"Well?"

"Who else could do it? Who else could look the part—and fight her way out, if all hell breaks loose?"

Slovotsky nodded. "As it always seems to. The only other choice I can think of is Andy."

"No." Karl shook his head. "No. Not if I'm going to be around. And not if I'm not. Clear?" When Andy-Andy was endangered, it was hard for Karl to concentrate on anything but her safety. He owed the others better—he owed himself better.

Tennetty looked him straight in the eye. "So I'm expendable, but Andrea isn't. Is that the way of it?"

"If you want to think of it that way, then go ahead. It's your choice." He folded his hands over and cracked his knuckles. "But damned if I'm going to justify myself to you, or to anyone else. You got that?"

She grunted.

"I asked if you got that."

"Yes."

"I can't hear you."

"Yes, dammit."

"Fine." He closed his eyes for a moment. He was missing something.

Ahh—if they were going to impersonate the slavers, then this raid didn't happen. And if it didn't happen, then what were all these bodies doing littering the meadow?

He raised a hand and beckoned Erek over. "I want Stick saddled and brought to me; I'm going up to the mesa to wait for Ellegon."

"Messages?"

"Two. First is to Chak. Begins: You and Slovotsky are going to pick a thirty-man team to impersonate some slavers; report to Walter. I want the wagons cleaned up and the insignia remounted; they're to be ready to roll by morning—but keep everyone out of the wizard's wagon; it's to stay sealed up until we have Henrad check it out. Ends. To Gwellin. Begins: Report to Tennetty, immediately. Ends. Go."

Erek nodded and ran off; Karl called Daherrin over. "Change of plans—I want the slavers buried in the woods."

"Buried? What for?"

"Practice."

Daherrin snorted, then broke into a deep-chested laugh. "I will get an explanation eventually, won't I?"

"If you live until dark. Bury them deep; I don't want any wolves digging them up. This raid didn't happen. Got it?"

"Yes, Karl Cullinane." The dwarf walked away, bellowing for his assistants.

Karl turned to Slovotsky. "Walter, I want you to pick the team carefully. No dwarves, and go light on elves."

"Of course."

"Compare notes with Tennetty and Chak. This could easily turn out to be messy; anybody who was even a bit off his game last night goes back Home."

"How about Donidge? I hear he was damn good last night."

"So?"

"So, his wife's due in a few tendays. I think it would be nice if he was around for it."

"Good point—count him out. Same for anybody else with pressing business back Home." He lowered his voice. "Exceptway orfay oinersjay; Ahiraway's avinghay enoughway oubletray, as it is. Kapish?" Pig latin wasn't exactly an elegant code, but no adults from This Side spoke English well enough to puzzle it out.

"Sí, señor. Gwellin's going to lead the overland group?"

"Right. Also, I want you to have the team work out with the slavers' guns, but make sure everyone's damn careful with that powder until we know more about it. Turn in your own guns to Gwellin; he's to have them broken down and loaded onto the flatbed."

"Can I keep a couple of pistols?"

"No—and none of our bullets or powder, either. We're going to play slaver until we get to Enkiar, and I don't want any slipups." Karl turned to Tennetty "You're to supervise the stowing of the slaver powder. I want a little taken out of each barrel and put in a flask. Carefully, now—this stuff might be poison; make sure you don't get any on you. Then seal the barrels back up tight and leave them alone."

"Fine." she nodded. "Who's going back Home with the powder?"

"You are. If Ellegon's brought the basket, you'll take Jilla and Danni with you. Otherwise they'll go back overland with Gwellin. Prepare them for both possibilities. Also, take three of the slavers' guns for analysis—put them with the powder. You're to take slaver rifles and powder to Riccetti and Andy-Andy; have them run an analysis. I'll want Ellegon to catch up with us somewhere this side of Enkiar; we'll set up a rendezvous when he gets here. He can bring Henrad along with him."

"And me?"

"Look—if you want in, you've got it. If you don't, you may as well take some time off at Home. If you do want in, you'll have to get yourself outfitted with that glass eye."

"Very well," Tennetty said. "You can count me out of this one, Karl. I don't want to wear a collar again. Ever."

That was too bad, but he wasn't going to try to push Tennetty into doing something that she really wasn't willing to do. "Fair enough. We'll have to do without."

Walter opened his mouth, then closed it. "Fine."

Erek arrived, leading Karl's horse. Karl pulled himself to Stick's broad back. "Anything else?"

"Yes." Tennetty jerked her thumb at the woods. "I've still got those two slavers."

Damn. Karl had forgotten about that for a moment—forgetting wasn't a luxury he could allow himself. "What kind of shape are they in?"

She shook her head. "Not too bad. Just a few cuts and bruises. I mean, I hamstrung them, of course—"

"Of course."

"—but they're not near dead. Should I fix that? Or do you want to?"

"The watchman lives. I promised him."

"Oh, great. 'Karl Cullinane's word is as good as gold'—is that it?"

"Yes."

"No!"

Stick took a prancing step backward; Karl reined in the stallion with difficulty. "Easy, damn you. . . . Yes, Tennetty. My word counts for something."

"What do you want to do? If we're going to try to impersonate a slaver team, we can't afford to have him wandering around, working his mouth. Do you want me to turn him loose?" she shrilled, her hand resting on the hilt of her saber.

Walter moved behind Tennetty; Karl waved him away. "No, Ten. Take a bottle of healing draughts—one of theirs. Fix up his legs, and one arm. We'll take him back Home, keep him locked up. He won't see any more than traders already have. Once we come back from Enkiar, we'll turn him loose. I promised that he'd live."

Tennetty took a deep breath. "And the other? You didn't promise every bloody slaver his life, did you?"

"No, I didn't. Kill him. Walter, go with her; take charge of the prisoner. I won't want a ley de fuga, kapish?"

"Got it."

Karl gave a light tug on the reins; Stick broke into a canter.

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